182 
FOREST AND STREAM 
April, 1920 
the rocks for brook trout where they ran 
up to five or six pounds, but were not so 
active as those of much less weight in 
the streams. Then I varied the fishing 
with the rather tame sport of trolling 
for lake trout off Marquette, and about 
Mackinac Island. Near the latter place 
there was fine black bass fishing at “The 
Snows,” as some rocks and reefs were 
locally known, a perversion of the French 
name. 
Fishing through the ice for pike and 
yellow perch, with very short lines and 
tip-ups, was commonly practised in the 
lakes near Oconomowoc. Cisco were also 
caught through the ice in Ocomomowoc 
lake at a depth of fifty feet or more. To 
satisfy a longing for fresh fish I went 
one very cold day to fish through the ice 
of Genessee lake, where the perch ran 
up to a pound or two ; fine, plump, highly- 
colored ones nearly as round as one’s 
forearm. Caught through the ice in win- 
ter, perch and cisco are delicious pan- 
fish, entirely without the weedy or earthy 
flavor they usually have in summer. 
On the occasion just alluded to the 
first fish taken was a fine pike of about 
ten pounds, which I left lying on the ice, 
and in the course of an hour half a dozen 
perch were lying beside it. The tempera- 
ture was below zero, and the fish were 
frozen stiff when I placed them in the 
sleigh. On my return home I proceeded 
to scale and dress the fish, putting them 
in a tub of water to thaw. When I had 
finished with the perch I found that the 
pike was alive and flapping about in the 
tub. Had there been any open water I 
am saisfied that he would have lived to 
be caught another day. When I placed 
him in the sleigh he wa,s apparently 
frozen hard and stiff, and his mouth and 
gills were encrusted with ice. 
Suspended animation in frozen fish is 
not uncommon, as their normal tempera- 
ture is but sligthly above the water they 
inhabit. On the shore of the lake near 
my residence I kept a live-box in which 
was usually a supply of minnows for 
bait fishing. One year, late in the fall, 
the lake was frozen by a sudden cold 
snap and remained frozen during the 
winter with two feet of ice. When the 
ice went out in the Spring it was discov- 
ei'ed that most of the minnows left in 
the box were swimming about as if noth- 
ing unusual had happened. 
I N September, 1875, four of us went to 
the Minnesota prairies, chicken shoot- 
ing. We proceeded to Glencoe, about 
fifty miles southwest of St. Paul, which 
was then the western terminus of the 
Hastings & Dakota railroad. By previ- 
ous arrangement we found awaiting us 
two spring wagons, with drivers, and a 
prairie schooner. The latter was loaded 
with tents, camp equipment, ammunition 
and other stores, including a liberal sup- 
ply of ice. We had half a dozen good 
bird dogs, the best being a bob-tailed 
pointer. After stowing our provisions and 
personal belongings in the schooner, two 
of us and three of the dogs got into each 
spring wagon. Our destination was the 
“sod settlement” of Norwegians, Swedes 
and Danes. We camped the first night 
near a slough which seemed to be alive 
with wild geese and ducks, old and 
young, but they were not molested. 
The next morning we launched out on 
the broad prairie, accompanied by flocks 
of beautiful purple swallows that fed on 
the insects disturbed by the feet of the 
horses. We seemed to be continually 
taveling at the bottom of a saucer-like 
depression, the sky line forming the rim. 
At last we came to what seemed at a 
distance to be green mounds with a post 
at the top of each. These proved to be 
the sod houses of the settlers, with stove- 
pipes protruding from their roofs. These 
huts are of simple construction, but are 
cosy and warm, and a safe harbor when 
old Boreas sends his icy blasts sweeping 
over the broad prairies, and frequently 
with a blizzard of snow. The huts are 
made by placing a stout frame of wood 
in a cellar three or four feet deep, and 
covering the whole with a layer of thick 
sod from the ground to the apex. 
Adjacent to each hut was a more or 
less extensive stubble field, from a quar- 
ter to a half section, with the prairie 
flowers and weeds already growing and 
forming a good cover for the chickens. 
There were no fences, so that the whole 
boundless prairie was ours. The wagons 
were driven along the opposite sides of 
a stubble, while the dogs ranged far and 
wide. When a covey was located by the 
dogs we alighted and flushed the covey, 
from which we knocked down from two 
to four chickens. The covey was not 
marked down and followed, but was left 
for another season. Then another covey 
would be located, and so on ad interim 
and ad libitum, inasmuch as coveys of 
pinnated grouse were then very numer- 
ous, well-filled and not hard to find. When 
birds enough to supply the wants of the 
farmers had been bagged we desisted 
for a day or two. The settlers were both 
glad and grateful for the plump birds 
and gave us fresh eggs and milk in re- 
turn. The sod settlement is now a thing 
of the past, and the green huts are re- 
placed with comfortable and modern 
dwellings and commodious barns, sur- 
rounded by dense windbreaks of Lom- 
bardy poplars. The present generation 
of the Scandinavians contain some of our 
best and most loyal citizens, many of 
them occupying places of trust and dis- 
tinction in State and Federal affairs; 
but alas and alack! There is also an 
alarming and regrettable vacuity in the 
number of chickens. 
Frequently, while driving along, we 
saw small groups of sandhill cranes, but 
never more than two or three, which did 
not seem to be much alarmed at our 
presence provided we kept at a respect- 
able distance. Once in a while we caught 
sight of a whooping crane, and almost 
daily we heard their distant whooping or 
trumpeting, which could be heard for a 
mile or two. The whooping crane is a 
magnificent bird, about the size of the 
trumpeter swan, about five feet tall, is 
pure white with black wing tips, and is 
remarkabie for its graceful, powerful and 
long-sustained flight. 
Its sonorous and resonant whooping is 
produced by an apparatus especially de- 
signed for the purpose. Its windfnpe is 
four feet long, half of it being coiled 
and the convolutions kept in a hollow 
space back of the breast bone. This in- 
strument, in its effects, might be com- 
pared to a combination of French horn 
and trombone, which would be welcomed 
as a valuable accession to a modern Jazz 
band. Occasionally, about mid-day or 
high noon, when the sun had reached its 
meridian height, could be seen half a 
dozen whooping cranes a mile or two 
high, at the very zenith, with wings 
spread and motionless, sailing gracefully 
and circling about in the bright glare of 
the sun’s rays for hours at a time, and 
at that great distance looking no larger 
than a flock of wild geese. 
D RIVING along one day we discerned, 
silhouetted against the skyline, cer- 
tain moving objects that at first 
sight seemed not unlike a squad of re- 
cruits engaged in military evolutions. As 
we drew nearer, however, we saw that it 
was a group of sandhill cranes perform- 
ing their peculiar “crane dance,” a thing 
we had often heard of, but until then had 
not seen. Calling in the ranging dogs 
